Good walls make good neighbours

When we arrived back at our house in Kaduna, it was after dark. As I walked through the gate into our compound, I noticed something was different. I stared at the row of doors and windows to my right. Were they always there? Had I walked through the wrong gate? Had someone built a row of houses onto the compound wall and cut through to make windows for themselves?

After a few moments of staring, I realised that actually, our wall was no more, and that these were the back doors to the houses in the next compound (only a foot or so away from where our wall used to be).

It’s funny: it’s almost impossible to gossip with Nigerian friends, because the events which I consider dramatic and for which I expect an exciting backstory are just seen as matter of fact here. Me: “Woah! The wall’s gone! What happened?!” Neighbour: “It fell down.” End of conversation.

So now we have new neighbours. This has several implications. Firstly, there is less to keep the kids from those houses from coming over to play with Ifeanyi and Ebele (our landlord’s children) and following them into our house. It’s taken months to train those two to knock before they enter, only to touch their toys and not our computers, to ask before eating or drinking something (cut away to unfortunate incident of child very nearly taking a gulp from my gin and bitter lemon). These newbies are far more unruly, and have among them Joseph – the boy who, in our first few weeks, lied to us about it being his birthday so that we bought him a present, and about whom it is written in chalk on their compound gate “Joseph is a bad boy. Joseph is a bad boy. Joseph is a bad boy.”

Secondly, one of these households owns a dog which can now freely roam into our courtyard. I don’t think it bites or is dangerous, but I’m slightly wary since it’s first appearance led to a hoard of screaming children running terrified into our house. We generally have our door open during the day, and every time I go to do the washing up I expect to come back and find it in our living room.

On the up side, there’s more light coming in through our front window and when we sit outside we’re not staring at a concrete wall any more. But it does mean that I feel slightly more self conscious about sitting on our porch in a strappy top and shorts, and – I’m afraid this may say something about the difference between my culture and that of Nigerians – I think I preferred sitting and looking at a grey wall than having other people being able to see me from their kitchen sink. 

Back in Nigeria

So here we are back in Kaduna. It’s wonderful, weird, sad, exciting, to be back after such a long and sudden break.

While we were gone, the elections for the State Houses of Assembly, State Governors and the President took place. As we had feared, there was violence in the north of Nigeria, including in Kaduna.

Some of our fellow volunteers were evacuated by the Dutch embassy. As they left the city, they saw evidence of the fighting that had been taking place, including burnt bodies at the side of the road. Our neighbour spent three nights in a row patrolling our local streets with an armed gang of men, protecting the area against threatened attacks; luckily, none came. Friends and colleagues knew of people who had had their houses burnt down. There were volunteers in the south of Kaduna state who witnessed far worse. We were very lucky to be out of Nigeria at this time.

There is still a curfew in Kaduna from 9pm to 5am. This Sunday will see the inauguration of those who were “elected” in these elections, heralded by international observers as the most free and fair the country has ever seen. It’s hard to know what to say to that. The swearing-in ceremonies could, naturally, be triggers for more trouble, so we are being evacuated to Abuja for the weekend. I hope that will be the end of it, and that life for people in the north can go back to normal after this.

An explanation for the lull

So, I got better. Then a few days later, I got sick again – really sick, maybe the most ill I’ve ever been, which was scary. And it just didn’t seem to go away fully. Once I’d taken one lot of drugs, I’d still feel ill and be diagnosed with something else: one thing after another. After five weeks, I’d had enough and was more than a little worried, so I contacted VSO who agreed that I needed to go back to the UK.

And that’s where I’ve been for the past couple of months. I saw doctors, who ran tests, which showed nothing, and then diagnosed me with “post-infection fatigue”. I spent weeks not able to do any more than lie in bed or on the sofa and gradually, painfully slowly, started to feel stronger.